Welcome to the Willets Lab at Temple University

The Willets lab is interested in understanding how heterogeneity at nanoscale interfaces impacts the function and properties of materials.Much of our research focuses on noble metal nanoparticles, typically gold and silver, which are both optically-active through the excitation of localized surface plasmons as well as electrochemically-active, which enables them to behave as nanoscale electrodes.

We use a variety of techniques including fluorescence, Raman, single molecule imaging, super-resolution imaging, electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and electrochemistry to understand how nanoscale interfacial heterogeneity affects a range of applications including sensing, energy harvesting and transfer, and surface reactivity. Visit our research and publication pages to learn more.

Lab News

March 6, 2019. Jet and Taryn's collaborative paper with David Masiello's group on surface ligand reorganization due to plasmon-induced heating is accepted at J. Phys. Chem. Lett.

February 26, 2019. Yun's collaborative paper with Xiaoxing Xi's group on measuring the energy distribution of plasmon-generated hot holes is accepted in ACS Nano.

February 25, 2019. The Willets lab bids farewell to our first Temple Ph.D. student, Vignesh, as he heads to a postdoc with Paul Bohn at Notre Dame. Best of luck Vignesh!

January 25, 2019. The Willets lab bids farewell to Yun Yu, as he moves on to a postdoc at UC Berkeley. Good luck Yun and thanks for all of your hard work!

January 2, 2019. The Willets lab welcomes a new undergraduate researcher, Jen Luu!